Phone service cost up $4.7m

The cost of providing phone services to commercially non-viable residential customers was $4.7 million higher in the 2006/07 financial year than a year earlier, the Commerce Commission estimates.

In a draft determination, the commission yesterday put the cost of meeting the telecommunications service obligation (TSO) for the local residential phone service in the year to June 2007 at $62.9 million, covering 51,139 commercially non-viable customers.

The year before the cost of the TSO, the successor to the Kiwi share, was $58.2 million, with 48,291 customers covered.